For the week of March 31 - April 6, 2008, MTV's The Hillswas the top 2 cable time-shifted shows with increases of 20.8% and 19.2% over its Live audiences in its Live+7 viewing audiences. It also had the two largest time-shifted audiences of 784,000 and 675,000 viewers.

It's not the first time that The Hills has topped the cable time-shifting list (it last did so the week of December 10-16, 2007), but in my recollection it's the first time that any cable show has taken the top 2 spots in our weekly top 20 time-shifting list.

Top 20 Most Time-shifted (DVR viewed) Cable Shows:

Rank

Programs

Network

Persons Live+7 (000s)

Persons Live (000s)

Time-shifted Audience (000s)

% increase from Live to Live+7

1

THE HILLS

MTV

4,551

3,767

784

20.8%

2

THE HILLS

MTV

4,185

3,510

675

19.2%

3

WWE RAW

USA

6,027

5,552

475

8.6%

4

ICARLY

NICK

4,270

3,866

404

10.5%

5

WWE RAW

USA

5,546

5,167

379

7.3%

6

WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE 4/06

DSNY

3,932

3,556

376

10.6%

7

WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE

DSNY

4,892

4,533

359

7.9%

8

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,666

3470

196

5.6%

9

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,368

3176

192

6.0%

10

NCIS

USA

3,937

3757

180

4.8%

11

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,484

3309

175

5.3%

12

STAR WARS:EPISODE II MOVIE

SPIKE

3,467

3,297

170

5.2%

13

NCIS

USA

3,764

3596

168

4.7%

14

NCIS

USA

3,443

3,287

156

4.7%

15

LOTR: RETURN OF THE KING MOVIE

TNT

4,045

3,906

139

3.6%

16

HANNAH MONTANA 4/03

DSNY

3,882

3,746

136

3.6%

17

SUITE LIFE OF ZACK&CODY 4/03

DSNY

3,350

3,222

128

4.0%

18

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,378

3252

126

3.9%

19

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,567

3444

123

3.6%

20

SPONGEBOB

NICK

3,518

3406

112

3.3%

Filling out the top 10 were the always popular two episodes of WWE Raw, Nickelodeon's iCarly and2 Spongebobs, 2 episodes of Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place, and an NCIS on USA. NCIS put 2 shows in the second 10.

Two past blockbuster movies, Star Wars: Episode II and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, also made the second 10 along with the padding of 4 Spongebobs a Hannah Montana and a Suite Life of Zack & Cody.

Our time-shifting chart ranks which of the Top 40 cable shows had the largest % increase in viewing between Live audience and Live+7 audience numbers from viewers watching shows later on their digital video recorders (DVRs) as well as indicating the size of the audience that watched in the 7 days after the live show aired.